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When The Bell Tolls A Tribute To Bob Jenkins
photo by Mark Bouvier Chief Bob Jenkins. |
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photo by Mark Bouvier |
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Tuesday December 12, 2017
By Cookie Steponaitis
There is a moment at the Addison County Firefighters Association Annual Dinner that brings over 300 men and women to silence and many to tears. There is the bell ringing ceremony for those firefighters who have answered their final calls on this earth and gone home for the last time. In solemn procession the ACFA Fire Honor Guard carries the American flag, the tools of a firefighter and the room comes to attention. Watching the face of each person present, there is a shared tribute and sadness for all assembled are a tight knit community who puts service above self. The bell will toll again and this time a light has gone out in the firefighting community, with the recent passing of Bob Jenkins.
Bob Jenkins had won just about every award the fire services had to offer and spent a lifetime making light of his accomplishments. With his gregarious personality and ability to teach and reach others, Jenkins was at the heart of fighting fire at the departmental, county and district levels. Jenkins joined the fire service in 1961 in Vergennes following in the footsteps of his father George Jenkins. First on the scene at the famous Fire of 1958, Jenkins senior never left his post for the next thirty-two hours. Young Bob Jenkins saw that day how the fire could win and the tools of the trade needed to change. For the next fifty plus years, Bob Jenkins and others were at the heart of the fire training and firefighting revolution. The outcome of that fire was the transformation of training and the science of fighting fires. Fred Jackman, Ralph Jackman, Ray Davison and Don Keeler took classes from a New York instructor and brought back to Vermont a new way of looking at how to organize structure and maintain a fire department. “Before that we went to the fires and did the best we could,” shared Jenkins in a July 2017 interview. “Sometimes we were successful and sometimes we lost the buildings. Today’s firefighter has to train year-round. Firefighter #1 is the introductory course and is over 200 hours. Today we respond to car crashes, water rescue, rescue calls, Hazmat, lost hikers and more.”
Whether at the helm of the Ferrisburgh Volunteer Fire Department from 1970-1985 and again for another four years, instituting Mutual Aid response with then Vergennes Chief Ralph Jackman or at countless junctures in the last fifty years in the fire service, Jenkins was on hand, in the mix and always quick to point out that no one walks in the fire service alone. “Being a firefighter is unlike anything else you do. There is risk and there is the passion to help others,” shared Jenkins in July 2017 and paused and touched his heart. “You are a firefighter with this first,” he expressed. “The rest comes when you follow the heart’s lead.” This past July when the new fire engine was dedicated to Bob Jenkins in Ferrisburgh a plaque was read for the hundred or so gathered there that day. It simply reads:
“Who through his example taught us,
Leaders are not measured by their
own accomplishments, but
Rather by the accomplishments of
those they have lead.”
Bob Jenkins, we were all better in our lives because you were in it. The alarm has sounded, the final call has gone out and you have gone home.
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